by Alan Duff
Took half an hour. The fucken nurse keeping on knocking on the door was I ready. Man, if she’d’ve come in herself naked I couldn’t’ve got it up. But I knew I had to. And I did. I knew it was never gonna match with … couldn’t even say it in my own mind what the cops were trying to prove or not prove — with my own daughter? — even if I wasn’t the father of the year of any of her years. The kinder cop tole me a week later I was in the clear. But that didn’t help things any in people’s eyes. A innocent man was guilty for life. And though she was dead and never coming back, what about him, Jake the father, who was left living with the unjust curse she put on him when he hadn’t done it? Thinking of curses, a man was puttin’ one right now on fucken Cody’s head for leaving this mess — again.
The vacuum was one of those roller ones that wasn’t. Br-rimmm-brr-rimmm, over and over the thin carpet, with the machine that was in need of human power, over carpet Jake’d seen rope of better quality than. The ole State knew what’d soak up the piss stains, even the blood if that was what was being spilled here but wasn’t, or not much, not like damn near every week when he’d lived all those years in Pine Block where he hardly went back to and not jus’ cos of the reduced status, but the times he’d been back, once in a while, nothing’d changed; same ole parties lasting all weekend, same scraps, same bitches and bastards beating up on each other and when they weren’t it was on their kids and one thing no one could say about Jake Heke, that he’d given his kids hidings. Though when he thought of it, there was no particular reason why not, he’d been thrashed by his old man and his ole lady (and my uncles and aunties and every second old fulla who I thought were all my grandfathers when both of the real ones’d died, one from a tree falling on him in the bush before I was born, the other from the booze Mum said, as if she could fucken talk). He just thought giving kids hidings wasn’t right; what’d a kid do to a man that could get him so upset he’d want to thrash it? A woman, though, well that was different. And as for a man to man, he still couldn’t understand why the whiteshit judges and magistrates had the power to punish two fullas for fighting each other when they were both agreed to fight. What’d it have to do with a fucken honky judge?
Oh well, he made the noise himself as if it was a real electric-powered vacuum cleaner, it took ages to pick things up, and even when he was through it didn’t look all that clean. But what the hell, it’d do. Wasn’t as if it was his mess. Fucken Cody, wait’ll he got home.
Now that looked bedda. Next the kitchen. He lifted the lid to the big pot — sure enough: all gone. Last night he’d cooked up a full pot, took out his two plates, he loved pork bones and watercress and potatoes, but still plenty left for Cody when he got home from where else but the pub, even if he had some of the mates with him there would still be enough for a man to have a feed in the morning, it’s how he starts his day, cos he don’t have lunch. The only one at work who didn’t. They’d stopped looking at him sideways for bein’ a Maori who didn’t love a big feed at lunchtime, after one time with a cold or something and not feeling hungry and finding he felt better without it, lunch, so it became a habit. Why a man’s stomach was still pretty flat, considering he was forty-two now and still loved his piss, ’cept in less quantities, most of the time; so he could still stand front of the bathroom mirror, the only one in the house, a State house what else, on his tiptoes to see his stomach was pretty good for a fulla his age, it was. But going without breakfast? Fuckim! And the mess they’d left, plates of bones with flies crawling over them, not that there was any meat left for the flies, those jokers’d sucked ’em dry, splashes of tomato sauce like congealed blood, green strands of cress like infected snot, a … kitchenscape like from out of a dream — a bad dream — cans of beer all over the bench and on the formica table along with the ashtrays spilled over and someone’d stubbed out his smoke on the fucken table! Jake so angry he wanted to punch out someone. Instead, he sighed and found a cloth under the sink — man it stunk! — which he poured dishwash liquid over and rubbed it around the cloth and then under the hot water till it near burnt, and it smelt bedda, then he started on the table; pushing along the debris of food scraps, bones, sauce, salt, butter grease, chunks of potato, stirring up the flies, but they only hopped onto the next bit in front of his bulldozer-cloth, but it was a good feeling seeing behind him the clean path it made; and so he had a tiny little grin on as he made the third run down the length of table, pushing the stuff into his other hand waiting at the end like a dump truck, steering around the plates, he’d get them in a minute, making a sound like a truck reversing as he backed over to the sink cupboard and dumped his hand-load of food and cigarette debris into the rubbish bin, back over to the table, going through three quick gear changes to get there, smiling, and marvelling at what a simple wet cloth with soap liquid in it did to chaos. Indeed, to life, the life, the person doing it, itself.
Standing at the table at his good work, all clean now, yellow the surface, the punishment it’d stood up to, hard stuff this formica, he could make out his reflection, his shape down there in the swirly yellow depths, light coming in through the windows, have to go to work on an empty stomach but he still wasn’t having lunch, lunch was over, like she was, Beth, his ex. When it’s over it’s over. He had time to do the bench before his bus to town. And that felt pretty good after it was done, too. Nice day it was gonna be, too. Long’s he didn’t start to thinking whilst standing at the bus-stop wishing they’d build a shelter so he could hide his shame of bein’ one of those older fullas didn’t have his own car. He just couldn’t save the money, not even a deposit. Telling himself to think of the mess he’d cleaned and how it looked from the start, and fuck owning a car they only cost money, and anyway he got to drive one of the trucks at work if someone was sick, and plenty of Fridays cos the same driver usually got on the piss Thursday pay night, but the boss couldn’t sack him, not these days when the country was scared of doing anything to Maoris, in certain things anyway, something to do with the Treaty of Waitangi, which Jake Heke didn’t know nothing about and nor did anyone, not a single person he knew.
He always felt better once he was sat down in the bus, the first of the day, six-thirty, comfortable in the same process within, of telling himself this was only temporary. Even though he’d had the job for going on what … five years now? Gonna be a nice day alright. So he felt even better as he thought of having the excuse to work all day with his shirt off, so people driving past would see he was no ordinary dude like they usually saw working on these road gangs, with big fat gut and coughing their fucken smoker’s lungs out when a man’d given them up five years ago, though only cos he had no money and got sick of hanging out for a smoke every three days after he got the dole, people’d — real people: whites and them fucken cruel-faced chinks’d — drive past his road gang and he could hear them, all day he could, in his mind saying to each other, Hey! Take a look at that dude’s build will you? So his head lifted in sweet prideful anticipation of working all day shirtless and admired. It kinda felt like being loved.
TWO
‘NUTHA SIX MONTHS t’ go, six months (six years, six fucken lifetimes), Who cares, eh, bro? Jimmy Bad Horse nudged shoulder to shoulder with one of the Brown Fist bros on the top landing, Who-the-fuck-cares, right? And the brother gave back a high-5, like they’d seen Michael Jordan do to his Negro brothers in the Bulls basketball team (big muthafuckas, fucken huge) on the teevee down in the rec room; and they didn’t have to give it words, words suck, who needs words, words’re for other people, to express ’emselves, and what did they, Browns, have to express, to put in them smooth words or even adequately into words? Mulla Rota knew what Bad Horse was attituding about, that it was life he wasn’t caring a fuck for, in here or out there where freedom supposedly was. But who said the boys weren’t so free in here, what with having each other, The Family, in their minds and (broken) hearts like that, in capital letter starts and maybe like The Marfia, which they misspelt like that cos no one thought it’d be spelt any
other way and they notioned, not read, about things outside of their gang membership life, only if they saw something on the teevee, a movie preferably Godfather II, or one of the Terminator movies, yeah, but a documentary’d do if it was about The Marfia, or tough subjects like that, and only if the recreation time happened to afford the chance to see such a programme, which it usually didn’t, and no one had time to watch much teevee on the outside, only in the mornings when everyone was sitting around waiting for a dope deal to go down and someone switched on a soap or sumpthin’, at nights, well, nights’re for being outiv it, nights’re for gettin’ wasted and, if the boys got lucky wasting someone with the boot, softball bats’re bedda, anything, who cared, long as it was hurtin’ some cunt — Mulla Rota knew exactly what his leader was saying without having to say it. Why he gave a crooked smile with the high-5, to show he was right on it, into it, with it, on what Bad was saying. Mulla was crooked smiling back that he was at and with his leader’s very soul (well, most of it anyway There were, uh, aspec’s of the dude a man weren’t sure of.) The … swathe they left behind was a wet glistening path the width of mops pushed in perfect unison, like most things close Brown Fist bruthas’d do.
Or it was till Bad’s eyes fell over the rail and saw something which turned his tattooed Maori warrior features into near the monster he was reputed to be when he was upset, wild at something. And Mulla knew better than anyone in a kind of grudging admiration that Jimmy Shirkey had managed to hold the lie, keep the bluff, for all this time and all these circumstances, of bein’ a prez of a gang chapter, the Brown Fists, with their avowed enemies: the Hawks. How Jimmy right now called back his cool, glazed over the fear in his eyes, said out the side of his mouth, Well I’ll be, if they ain’t sent us in a Hawk. They weren’t allowed to say the word black, it was agreed at a council meeting right here in this prison several years ago that any Brown using that hated word of those hated cunts was out. The word itself was banned, which meant that Blackie Rogers had to change his name and so did Johny Black and they even had to call another meeting out in the exercise yard (so the utha prisoners can see how staunch we are) to discuss whether one of them’s daughters named Ebony might have to have her name changed when one of the fullas told ’em the name meant black and about as black as you can get. That the fulla loved his kid — which was most unusual for one of ’em, they all knew that and laughed about their loving their Brown Family firs’ — made it that much harder to make a decision, cos he was one of the toughest they’d ever had in the history (seventeen years, man, we been around) of the Browns, and he had his li’l girl in his mind, his less broken heart. If he, you know, axshurely loved this kid of his (which he seemed to at visits when his wife brought the kid every fortnight, he never let her go and photos everywhere of her in his cell and only one Penthouse one with the blonde sheila — She American, bro? Yeah, she is — with her twat open and exposed, it and she so beautiful it took Mulla’s breath away every time he visited the bro’s cell) she was a concept fixed — no, etched — in him, like the tattoo marks all over his arms and legs and face, what if he wouldn’t accept the name change of his beloved child and went over to them, the Hawks, fought for them? That is what they secretly thought but not a one of the council of seventeen members, one for every year of existence of The Family, said. Was Bad Horse who turned it to a joke and aksed ’em who of ’em read anything to know Matt’s girl’s name meant what it did? So Ebony remained part of the permissible language, one of the acceptable mentionables, and it came in handy when they wanted to make a reference to mean black. Funny how even unejacated dudes adapted the only permissible word for black.
Mulla knew it wasn’t cool to lean across Jimmy and see for himself, so he just went, Yeah? That right? They musta made a mistake? And then he looked at Bad Horse cos Bad’d stopped and was thinking; Jimmy Bad Horse was pondering. His great shaggy head of scalp-mop frizzle and sprayed-out beard came up after a few moments, in the waiting Mulla hearing the voices and opening and closing of grilles and cell doors below echo an ole familiar (tune?) but for some reason like out of a troubling dream this time, and his heart’d started hammering jus’ a li’l bit more’n usual, cos he was hoping Bad wouldn’t be aksing him to go down and take this bl — this Hawk cunt out. Mulla only had two weeks to go, and this was his third prison lag with only a cupla years of freedom in between, and the only women he’d ever had was ones on the block for all the boys to do and a cupla sheilas raped by the same boys after being lured, drunk, to a HQ party. When he wasn’t thinking about violence and doing bigtime armed robberies, Mulla Rota was thinking about women, about having his own girlfriend who he could (secretly) love. And if Bad ordered him down there to whack out the Hawk with a battery in a sock or stick a blade up his bl — up his Hawk arse, then it’d be anutha five years of bein’ here. And inside, a man knew he was getting to his breaking point, even if he never showed it not once.
Now Jimmy was looking at him with those ordering eyes as they stood on the top landing and the world at the bottom was far away and yet forever close if Jimmy was gonna make the decision to send a man down to do the bizniz, reminded in that moment of inner despair, got a picture of the kid, of that Nig Heke when Jimmy’d stuck the shottie in Nig’s trembling hand and tole him he hadda lotta makin’ up to do did Nig Heke, and poor Nig, such a nice kid and could motor jus’ like his ole man who’d showed up Horse here in that pub he ruled, McClutchy’s, ended up dead along with Fattyboy Peters, plus a Hawk, in that battle they done on the main street of Two Lakes. Come to think of it, if Nig was around now he’d a have to’ve changed his name, or would he? Mulla briefly distracted by that rather serial question of propriety and whether it could be said that Nig or nigger meant black or did it just denote a person’s race in a slangy (and racist) way? Till he pretend-casually sauntered over to the railing and took a look for himself and then felt like diving off and sidewaying himself when he saw who the Hawk was.
But Mulla came back to his position, left of Jimmy Bad Horse, gave a sideways glance, took a deep breath and aksed (we never say ask. Ask is for them to say, real people, Utha People. We say aks) his leader, Want me to go down do it? Inside crying. Inside near to vomiting.
Bad Horse came right over to Mulla with suspiciously aksing eyes of, if the truth be known, a coward to anutha, how come you got so much courage when you never had it before, you know that and I know that, it’s been anutha of our unspoken unnerstanin’s, what we see mirrored of each utha, but now here you are volunteering your, let’s face it, nightmare?
Mulla? you only got a li’l while to go, Jimmy Bad Horse was giving him an out, ’cept Mulla thought it might be a trap and he weren’t walking into no trap, not one of Horse’s, they tended to have a lot of hurt in ’em, he played cards like that, too: merciless and sly, and he cheated.
So Mulla gave anutha of his crooked smiles from all their repertoire of facial language, it was their articulation that childhood hadn’t given them in word and emotional expression equivalent, repeating near to a word his leader’s statements back there ’bout eight cell doors ago, Who the fuck cares, right? ’Cept without Jimmy’s emphatic insistence, since Mulla did care. He cared very very much for his freedom soon to come after five and a few months long years and that was jus’ this stretch, this third lag. He hadn’t lost as much remission as Jimmy, who, bein’ the bigtime prez, was obliged to do things that costim time off his remission, when they’d both got the same sentence for the rumble Nig and Fattyboy and the Hawk cunt got killed in, conspiring to cause grievous bodily harm. He was coming up thirty-six an’ he’d hardly been free in sixteen years, just long enough each time to get into serious trouble cos each time out he found coping was his hardest thing. So, naturally he couldn’t find it withinim, not now, to say those copied words and copied facial expression with conviction. Not with a tough cunt down there having to be taken out by serious means as no utha way’d work, that was the Hawk sergeant-at-arms down there and he was in here by prison authority mis
take for sure, even they wouldn’t do such a thing deliberately as to send the mortal enemy into the Brown’s wing, just as they wouldn’t deliberately do it to a Brown. They were arseholes, but they weren’t cunts. But seein’ he was here, Apeman — blank, cos he was so mean and tough and with total consuming hatred for the Browns he’d changed his surname by deed poll to that word, starting with B you weren’t even allowed to think it, though that of course was impossible cos the world, existence, was full of references to that word and so were a man’s natural thoughts since he woke up middle of the celled nights seeing and thinking — blank, meaning black — thoughts, and the night was that colour and so was some of his own gang member mates, their skin colour, and so was Michael Jordan and mosta that basketball team and so was Mike Tyson himself (and he’s just out of jail and all their singing heroes) and so … Mulla stepped over and looked down below again, but mainly to get out of Horse’s too-knowing eye stare … so was Apeman with the changed surname that colour and tauntingly changed surname. And if Ape happened to glance up in this instant he’d be carving Mulla Rota’s face into his bl — his dark dark heart and his even darker (ebony) mind. So Mulla didn’t look down for long, just long enough to dig even deeper within himself so he could say to Jimmy when he stepped back alongside him, with mop in hand, If tha’s what’s, uh, required.